Details Matter
by Anti-Kryptonite
Summary: Sometimes, the smallest details are the most important. Belle and Rumplestiltskin share three picnics as they dance ever closer to each other.


A/N: I know I'm behind at replying to reviews, but please know how much they mean to me! Special thanks to promisesandchipped cups for the prompt! Hope everyone enjoys!

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

Details Matter

* * *

"It's been a month since I first came here," Belle says, and cannot help but realize anew how much has changed since that first time she walked through the Dark Castle's doors to view the pristine, uncluttered, dust-free abode of the Dark One. Not a misnomer, entirely, but certainly a misleading title, she thinks, her eyes on Rumplestiltskin as he spins.

His hands pause, ever so slightly, a hesitation so slight it's almost not there at all (but oh so telling, and he pauses more often now than he did a month ago), before he continues spinning as if she said nothing at all. But she knows—he heard her.

"I was thinking," she continues slowly, ambling around the long table in the center of the hall in his general direction, "that we could do something."

His eyes narrow and the wheel's movements are not quite as smooth as usual (when she follows its hypnotizing motion with her eyes, lulled to sleep beside the fireplace on the second chair that appeared there shortly after he gave her the library).

She tries to bite back her smile of triumph, but doesn't entirely succeed. "Dinner, maybe."

"We have dinner every night," he retorts with a roll of his eyes, a flicker of his fingers, a shrug to his shoulders, a trill in his voice (Rumplestiltskin never speaks with just his voice, never says anything with only words).

Belle chuckles (she can't help herself), and lets herself turn toward him, abandoning the table as a shield between them. His eyes narrow, almost imperceptibly (except she is looking for it), and he regards her (regards the shrinking distance between them) warily, carefully, almost-but-not-quite nervously (and she feels a familiar twisting feeling in the center of her chest as she wonders, yet again, what has happened to him during his long life to make him so very sure that everything is a trap and everyone an enemy).

"A special dinner," she clarifies for him. He likes details, and she likes their conversations, and so there is a certain give and take, a rhythm to their exchanges that amuses (captivates) her, a cadence she has come to crave and enjoy and savor. "With all your favorite foods."

"You think you know them?" His challenge is blatant, ringing like a call to arms in the quirked tone of his voice, the arch to his brows, the glitter in eyes she can never quite describe (never quite look away from).

"I _know_ I know them," she counters with a smile. She takes another step (three paces away from the wheel). He tenses. She stops. (Another rhythm, a dance that leads them inches nearer with every revolution.) "You're not the only one who's observant, you know."

"That depends entirely on whether or not you have a book in hand, now doesn't it?" He spins to his feet with a flourish of his hands to hide that he had dropped the thread from nerveless fingers at her final step.

Belle catches her breath (fights the urge to take a step away from his new proximity). "So you'll come to dinner, then?"

She knows she made a mistake as soon as the request is fully uttered. Rumplestiltskin studies her, his exaggerated expressions falling away to leave behind a sober expression, a neutral face, the one he wears when he's thinking too hard to play his facial games of manipulation and expectation.

"You always _bring_ me dinner," he points out slowly, and she can tell he is solving the puzzle right in front of her. He's centuries old and meticulously smart, with a memory she can scarcely believe, and he never stops _thinking_, _planning_, _solving_. She doesn't know why, then, she tries to surprise him (though she thinks that everyone, no matter their age, deserves a pleasant surprise every now and then, the infamous Dark One more than most). "But you want me to _come_. Why?" And as quickly as that, he is on guard, tense, suspicious (and betrayed, a flash of vulnerability in eyes that drink in the light).

"It's a special dinner," she says, because she refuses to be intimidated or ashamed (or guilty). "If we eat it where we always do, it won't mean as much."

Something in the angle of his posture, the slant of his shoulders, eases as he smiles one of his showman's smiles at her (but he doesn't seem to notice she's edged just a bit nearer, a mere two paces from him now). "The library is for cleaning, not for eating!"

Belle smiles at him. She doesn't understand why her skin is tingling, a buzz trapped between muscle and skin, but she thinks she likes the feeling (and the fact that it only happens when she and Rumplestiltskin dance their dance, sing their song of wary circling). "Not the library, Rumplestiltskin—the garden."

"The garden," he repeats flatly.

"Yes." She laughs. "A picnic! Haven't you ever been on a picnic?"

He sneers at her, and Belle's heart jumps in her chest (because he only resorts to condescension when he is hurt, when he wants to lie, when he feels cornered). "A picnic? Outside?" His laugh is almost cruel, very derisive, and wholly stunted. "Perhaps you've been here too long, dearie, and have forgotten that there's nothing but snow and wind outside these thick walls."

"Those don't have to be bad things," she says softly (and this is the current that runs beneath their dance, these statements that mean so much more than the words collectively can relay). "They can be good, too. We can eat on the snowdrifts by the lilac bushes. We can make snow angels in the empty vegetable beds. We can—"

"Die of hypothermia," Rumplestiltskin interrupts snidely (but she sees the trace of concern in the corners of his mouth, the stillness of his hands). "That would shorten your forever, wouldn't it?"

It's Belle's turn to roll her eyes. "I'm not going to die," she says dryly. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm living with the most powerful being in the land—even if I do catch cold, surely that's not enough to thwart the mighty Dark One."

His small, amused smile makes this entire conversation (the hours spent planning and hoping, the work accomplished in the kitchen) all worth it. "Only the Dark One is immortal, Belle."

A flicker of confusion passes through her at the seeming non sequitor, but she smiles back anyway. "But one picnic in the snow can't make that much of a difference, surely." She steps closer, and then, on impulse, reaches out and takes his hand in hers (this wasn't part of her plan, wasn't something she'd included in her memorized approach—or maybe it was and she just didn't admit it until now). "Please, Rumple?"

He doesn't even breathe for a long moment. His eyes dart from hers to their hands and back again, and there is nothing but disbelief and confusion and something darker and newer and smokier in his face. Finally, just when she is ready to let go and step back and apologize for the whole thing, he says, very quietly, "No, a picnic can't hurt."

She beams up at him, her hand tightening on his (and it's warm and ridged and unique, and she likes it). "Then we can?"

Quite abruptly, he regains his poise, and the grand gesture he makes pulls his hand free of hers. "_Only_ if there's wildberry pie!"

The windows are all covered up, the fire is dim, and it's always slightly cool here, but the hall seems to be filled with light and warmth and promise. Belle basks in the feeling, her eyes falling half-closed as she laughs freely. "I wouldn't dream of having a picnic without it," she promises.

And she doesn't say a word when there's no snow or clouds or frost when Rumplestiltskin leads her into a blooming, verdant garden rich with the smell of lilacs. She only smiles and sets out the blanket and the foods, blinking and thanking him when he makes the tea appear in their battered and comfortable tea set, laughing when he does a mocking impression of one of the heroes in the book she's reading, quiet when the food is gone and the pie eaten and the dishes flourished away. She lounges in the garden of the Dark Castle beneath caressing sunlight, and beside her the Dark One lies with his head on his clasped hands as he watches her from beneath lowered lashes (a smile playing along his mouth).

And she is, Belle realizes, quite content.

* * *

"Come, come, come!" Rumplestiltskin chides her. He does not quite touch her hand, but she feels the fervent warmth of him as he dances in front of her, hands fluttering in front of him, his steps quick and agile even though he doesn't look behind him to see where he is leading her. "It's spring, you said, and my halls are certainly the brighter for it."

"Yes, spring," Belle says, and laughs (because she can, because she wants to, and because Rumplestiltskin in a fuss is more amusing than any minstrel Avonlea ever afforded). "And it's _supposed_ to be brighter than winter."

"Warmer, too," he points out dryly, and spins to gesture grandiosely at the doors swinging open before him.

Belle's mouth falls open. She can only stare (in wide-eyed wonder, in touched awe) at the garden awaiting her. On their one month anniversary, when he had melted snow and she had made wildberry pie, she had thought it beautiful. But now, seeing it with trees weighed down by more greenery than a whole forest could support, the grass hidden beneath as many flowers as there are stars in the sky, the whisper of the wind laughing between the giggles of a hidden stream…now it is more beautiful than anything Belle has ever seen before in her life.

"I know you spend all your time reading," Rumplestiltskin says in her ear, his chin inches above her shoulder, "but surely there comes a time when you can stop _observing_ and actually _do._"

"What do you mean?" Belle breathes out, half offended and half far too touched to be anything but wondrously pleased.

"I mean," he says with a trilling laugh that rings more true than most of his ever do (and her breath stumbles and falls and lies panting in her throat when his hand rests on her lower spine to push her forward), "you can do more than just look."

The grass is softer than clouds beneath her feet, and with every step, with every sway of wind-caressed blooms, a different fragrance floats into the air to tease her senses. It Is beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful thing she has ever seen, and yet she can't fully take it in because Rumplestiltskin is just behind her, his steps timed to fall right behind hers, his hands hovering near her as if he wants to touch but doesn't trust himself to, and he gazes at her with an expression as close to happy as she's ever seen it.

"It's perfect," she breathes out, and feels her heart go exultant in her chest at Rumplestiltskin's answering smile.

"But what is spring without a picnic?" he asks, his flourished hand creating a quiet breeze that caresses her cheek.

She laughs again (and wonders if it's possible to be drunk on happiness) and turns to look in the direction he's pointing, and she is not surprised at all to see a blanket spread over emerald green grass, more food than a dozen people could eat decorating its patterned surface (because this is Rumplestiltskin, and if she knows anything about him, it is that he never does anything halfway).

The sudden urge to dance across the grass, to spin in a circle until she's dizzy enough to fall to the cushioned ground, to jump into Rumplestiltskin's arms and hug him until he hugs her back, assaults her. It's too much (too close, too much of a leap from the acceptable proximity of their current dance), but she allows herself to whirl toward Rumplestiltskin and smile up at him and take hold of his hand. "I love it!" she exclaims, but she loves even more the soft, pleased, wondering expression her words provoke on his face.

"Yes, well," he shrugs (but makes certain his hand doesn't move from between hers), "might as well eat it before the ants carry it all away."

"Now I must warn you," she teases him, pulling him forward and only reluctantly letting go when they both arrange themselves on opposite ends of the blanket. "It's only a picnic if there's wildberry pie."

His grin is mischievous, his eyes sparkling with amusement, and his fingers curl over a covered platter with a twist of his pinkie and a flick of his wrist that begs for attention. Belle willingly gives it, her blood fizzing in her veins, her laughter curling up and up and up inside her until she is breathless and overwhelmed, and she cannot tear her eyes from this glimpse of a new layer of the infamous, legendary Rumplestiltskin. "I'm a monster, not an idiot," he retorts with an edge to his staccato voice. "Of course there's pie."

Belle (filled with bravery, because bravery is easy to find when she's with Rumplestiltskin, who thinks she's brave already and looks at her as if she is more than just a backwards princess) reaches out and puts her hand over his. She doesn't even look down at the pie he unveils, just stares at him until he begins to look almost nervous. "You're not a monster," she says. (It's the first time she's said it, but it feels as if she's said it a hundred times before.)

The right side of his mouth quirks upward in a half-smile, a broken smile, as if it has been so long since he made a real smile that he doesn't quite remember how to fully shape it. "Belle…" he whispers, but that is all he says.

After a moment where the air between them seems somehow both inconsequential and entirely too thick, Belle uncovers another smile for him and pulls her hand back to her own lap. "So," she says, a little too brightly (but it is hard to talk at all when her heart is lodged in her throat). "What's the first course?"

This blatant invitation breaks the somber, charged tension, and the showman Rumplestiltskin emerges again, playful and enigmatic, giggling and charismatic (and she can't remember why she was ever afraid of him). She is his prisoner, of a sort, but a willing one, and he is an attentive master, free with his gifts and his kindness, and for this laughing, sunny afternoon, Belle pretends that they are only a man and a woman (and maybe, somewhere deep inside, she even pretends that he is courting her).

They are eating their pie, Belle playing the fork through the dark purple fruit because she is too full to do more than occasionally lick a small taste of the sweet dessert from the fork, when Rumplestiltskin goes silent, takes a breath, hesitates, then blurts, "Are you happy here, Belle?"

She blinks at him, the fork falling from nerveless fingers. "What?"

"You've been here three months now," he says quietly (and she has never heard his voice sound lower, deeper). "I don't hear you crying through the nights anymore, and I know you enjoy the library. So…" He licks his lips, a nervous tic she has never seen him make (and she watches him all the time, out of the corner of her eye, in every room, no matter what they are doing). "So are you? Happy, here? With me?"

She isn't as skilled as he at reading situations or manipulating people, but she thinks that if she says the wrong thing here, she will make him retreat back behind the armored shell she hasn't seen for months now. She thinks that if she looks away or grows sad or speaks of her father, he will run away and he will never believe her when she tells him he isn't a monster. She thinks that if she lies, he will believe her.

So she tells the truth.

"I am happy," she tells him, and adds a mischievous grin when he stares at her. "After all, I've never tasted wildberry pie as good as this!"

She is a prisoner, trapped in a single castle when she had wanted only to see the world, but she is a hero now, and she is sitting at Rumplestiltskin's side and he stares at her as if he is afraid she doesn't really exist, and she's having a hard time remembering why these should be considered bad things.

When his hand brushes, as if by accident, against hers, when he conjures up a book for her to read aloud to them both, when he sprawls out and ends up mere inches away from her (close enough she fancies she can feel the warmth emanating from him), Belle lets out a deep sigh and realizes that she has yet to stop smiling.

And she is, without question, utterly and completely happy.

* * *

"Now, where were we?" He turns from the shop door, closing behind the one they all call savior and the king and queen (or prince and princess; Belle isn't quite sure which), his hand a little too tight on the gold head of his cane, his smile just a bit too drained and wan to be natural.

"I think," she says warmly, because the interruption was more illuminating than frustrating (because he is helping, now, without asking for prices or deals, and because he softened at the presence of a dog and he answered her question without hesitation), "that we were at 'this looks delicious.'"

"Ah." The line of his shoulders eases (just as it did in the Dark Castle, the movement as noticeable here beneath suit coats as it was beneath vests and silk shirts), and he loosens his grip on his cane. "Of course."

He follows her (watches her, through human eyes as wonderstruck and disbelieving as wide, reptilian pupils ever were), and Belle feels his gaze, his nearness, as if they are tangible forces, strong enough to leave her heart beating fast and her blood thrumming like lightning through her veins. Her hands shake, just a bit, as she opens the picnic basket Ruby loaned her and pulls out the sandwiches.

She made all the food for this picnic in the tiny kitchen of her new apartment, the one that seemed to be everything she wanted (independence and freedom and self-sufficiency) and yet only made her realize (as she stood in the middle of the room in the middle of the night with nothing at all to break the fear that grips her) that she had nothing at all she wanted anymore (a warm hand that trembles to touch her cheek, a heart that beats in time with her own, eyes that fill with tears when she whispers _I love you_, strength wrapped up in vulnerability). She had become so fixated on not making a mistake, on not being tied down and forgotten and put away on a shelf, that she forgot independence doesn't mean being alone. Freedom doesn't mean solitude. Self-sufficiency doesn't mean her heart forgets what it is to love. And hamburgers at Granny's doesn't mean she can't come to see Rumplestiltskin, can't dance the dance they perfected so long ago and come ever so much nearer and clasp his hand and remind him (past all the fears and nightmares and insecurities that clamor at him when he's alone, because he is more like her—she is more like him—than either of them want to admit) that he is loved, and he is not alone, and she is here now.

So she smiles up at him and hands him a sandwich (different from the ones they'd eaten on their earlier picnics, but as long as they share them together, she doesn't care), and says, "I hope you don't mind having a picnic indoors."

"Indeed not," he answers immediately, and she has trouble keeping a coherent thought in her head when he steps right up next to her with the excuse of grabbing a napkin (but the mischievous gleam to his eyes and the crooked quirk of his lips give him away, and she realizes that he relishes their newfound freedom in proximity as much as she does). "It's been winter here for decades, and even spring is a bit harsher here than in our old world. Indoors seems like the safer option."

"I like it in here," she pronounces, with a glance all about at the familiar items she remembers dusting and the unfamiliar objects she hasn't yet touched. "It feels like home."

There is silence for a long moment. Rumplestiltskin pays almost painful attention to the sandwich he unwraps with such careful, deliberate movements. Belle waits, watches him from the corner of her eye, holds her breath (hoping he will ask, will notice, will realize why she said what she did).

And he does, because he is smart and because he hopes even when he thinks himself a fool for doing so.

"Home," he repeats quietly (almost desperately). "A strange word to describe this place."

"Not this place," Belle says, her volume matching his, her patient hope a perfect mirror reflection of his hopeful patience. "But a perfect way to describe the Dark Castle. I still remember my room, you know—I had only reached the C's in my reading, and only the B's here, but there's time for everything."

He arches his brow at her (hiding, always hiding, but she doesn't mind, because he lets her see into his hiding places, and they can both stay there, safe from the world of intruding royalty and impetuous saviors and murdered consciences). "Has anyone ever told you that you read too much?" he asks archly, bits of Mr. Gold mingling with the showman Rumplestiltskin to create a hodgepodge of identities that makes Belle want to keep finding and solving all of his mysteries.

"I believe they have," she teases him, and giggles because he cannot keep a stern face at this question, not when he has given her thousands of books, two libraries, and the freedom to read as much and as often as she wills.

Rumplestiltskin softens (a transformation she thinks nobody but her has ever seen, and she likes that, too; she likes secrets and private confidences and truths so clear that only she can see because nobody else looks). "They were wrong," he admits (apology and regret and affirmation all tied up together in so few words; he is the word-spinner, after all).

"We're all wrong at one point or another," she replies (her own apology hidden in acceptance, and he hears it because he is Rumplestiltskin and because he loves her).

His smile is the half-broken one, the one that cracks her heart and makes her heart swell to twice its size all at once. (His half-broken smile is not quite fully half anymore, more like three-quarters whole and only a quarter broken, and that tiny detail is more precious to her than any other she knows.)

They eat for a moment, and she loves that even silence is comfortable between them. Words are special and important and sometimes they are gifts and other times they are wounds, but they are always crucial to a relationship strong enough to engender true love's kiss. And yet silence is good, too, moments when neither of them need to speak because a glance can say what a paragraph cannot and the touch of hands can say as much as a hundred apologies. So she eats her sandwich and bites her lip to hide the strength of her grins when he finds excuses to reach past her and bump her hand with his own (pretending to clumsiness when they both know how dexterous his hands are; pretending to boldness when they both know how shy he truly is behind the dark facades), and he watches her from lowered eyes and sets his cane aside so he can fully turn his attention to her (proving how much he trusts her, to put away his crutch in favor of her presence).

"Of course," Rumplestiltskin says, when the sandwiches are only crumbs and the silence is charged with the things they each want to say, "it's not a true picnic unless there's wildberry pie. These details matter."

Belle hides her smirk and nods knowingly at him (this is their dance, their game, the song they once played and then missed and grew rusty at but now enjoy once more). "Very true. Too bad it is so hard to find wildberries here in Storybrooke."

"I believe I know where some grow." He pauses to swallow, tilts his head just a bit, and adds, tentatively, "I could show you, sometime. If you'd like."

"I would love that," she says delightedly, and savors the warmth of his answering smile. She turns back to the picnic basket, fusses with it as if to pack it up again. "I shall have to remember that next time," she muses aloud. "For today, though, I'm afraid I just had to make do."

His face when she pulls out the pie from the bottom of the basket is worth three decades of imprisonment to get to see (and she thinks she would spend three decades more trapped in the Queen's tower if she only could know for certain that the joy stirring to life in his face would never be stolen from him again). "Oh, Belle," he murmurs as he takes the piece of pie she hands him, and the soft exhalation of her name is more than price enough for the work involved in tracking down berries that tasted close enough to the ones Rumplestiltskin loves so much. (_He_ is worth all these little details she discovers and memorizes and uses to please him and draw him from his brittle, hollow shell.)

And when he kisses her, tasting of those berries and sugar and hope, Belle laughs in sheer happiness, and she goes dizzy and euphoric when he laughs too, and pulls her closer (and this is where their dance was leading them all along, into the circle of each other's arms).

And the feeling inside of her, Belle knows now, can be nothing but pure, undiluted _joy_.

The End


End file.
